SUPERGUFRAM feat. STUDIO JOB @ Design Miami / Basel June 13- 18, 2017
Gufram celebrates its debut in the most sophisticated international design show – Design Miami / Basel – presenting SuperGufram, the brand’s new spin-off born to investigate the boundaries between industrial design and applied art in the twenty-first century. For its first outing, SuperGufram hosts a series of limited edition pieces by Studio Job, the craziest and most innovative design duo.
SuperGufram aims at taking radical design a step forward. The brand, whose iconic Radical pieces are showcased in the most important design museums and collection around the world, introduces a spin-off, a virtual reality with a surreal software, a gallery with no physical space, an accelerator of possibilities bearing the name Gufram which becomes SUPER within the Curio platform in Basel.
SUPERGUFRAM focuses onlimited editions with a series of episodes where the main characters are some of the most visionary designers of our time. Producing collections of SUPER-limited edition pieces – 7 for each object, in this case – SUPERGUFRAM gives the tireless Piedmontese company the chance to free its imagination challenging once more its artisanal skills on how to approach and transform polyurethane foam. A know how enhanced by the use of Guflac®, the patented paint which allows to coat all possible shapes.
SUPERGUFRAM’s first capsule collection is developed together with Studio Job - the design duo formed by Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagel based in Antwerp and Amsterdam – who imagined cheeky and ironic pieces matching with their philosophy, playing thoroughly with dissimulation. The booth inside the fair ground is itself a work of art thanks to the wall panels Another Brick in the Wall: this modular covering forms an estranging chamber of wonders, an immersive world where everything seems the opposite of reality; the typical red brick pattern becomes a soft surface, to be sold in pieces like salami!
SUPERGUFRAM feat. Studio Job includes multiple typologies of furniture all united by the same crazy and creative use of polyurethane. The Steam coffee-table is a pot-shaped base in golden-coloured bronze surmounted by a “smoky” top – typical of Studio Job’s poetics – in soft polyurethane foam. Moon interprets the Globe cabinet by Studio Job in Gufram’s catalogue since 2013; in this new version, the soft central Earth changes its face because we leave our world heading towards other planets landing on a grey Moon which loses its weight. The punching bag Punch My Wall, a not-to-be-missed piece in a home fitness centre, is the highest representation of the combination between reality and fiction, heavy and light, between dense and soft in the shape of a fake bricks column to punch in the morning.
Studio Job’s relation with Gufram dates back to 2013 when the Globe cabinet made its way into Gufram’s collection. For Design Miami/ Basel 2017 Job Smeets and Nynke Tynagelconceived a series of limited edition pieces including a punching bag in an orange brick pattern, a cooking pot coffee table complete with its own steam, a wall divider made of four different elements referring to the unlikely bark of a specific tree, and a shiny globe stand. And, as a homage to Globe, a new version was created: a moon-cupboard, inspired by the most romantic satellite, enriches the collection. Studio Job, based in Antwerp and Amsterdam —plays in a unique way with the dichotomy of soft and hard, dream and reality, creating an unpredictable short-circuit of perceptions and expectations, walking along with the limitless experimentation that a material like polyurethane allows, which is actually the possibility to create anything. When asked to comment on this new project Studio Job said: “Super Smooth, Super Slick, Super Sexy, Super Smug, Super Studio Job. It's Super Gufram! Super Gufram is the holy Grail of smooth monumental design.”
